Two Heads are Better than One: 10 Collaboration Tools for Business to Help Your Team Thrive

44% of workers say they want more tools to manage their work, according to a Workfront survey of more than 2,000 U.S. workers.

They need tools to manage their projects. They need tools that help them communicate with teammates who work out of different offices.

They need tools that help them find information when they need it. Collaboration tools for business help teams do all these things, and more.

Here are 10 business collaboration tools that will make your team more productive:

1. Instant Messaging

We’re used to texting friends and family. We expect and want the same medium of communication in the office. However, our reasons for communicating are different at home and work.

A tool that’s used in the office has to increase the effectiveness of employees. Instant messaging fits that bill though.

It’s great for quick questions. It works well for back and forth conversations that aren’t in-depth enough to require a phone call. It’s also not as intrusive as a phone call.

It provides workers with another form of communication so they can side-step the never-ending email chain. This is a good thing. While there’s still a place for email in the office, no one wishes they had more emails to respond to.

2. Email

The average office worker receives 90 emails a day and sends 40 emails a day, according to Templafy. We all spend too much time in the inbox. However, email has its benefits.

It’s one of the best ways to collaborate with people outside of your company. It’s one of the few tools that everyone uses. You don’t have to ask if they use this or that software.

Also, there are situations where email is a better communication tool than instant messaging or phone calls. For instance, email is superior when you want to convey a long and complex message.

With email, you can take your time to organize your thoughts and put them together in the way that gets your point across precisely. Your colleagues then have a chance to digest your message and craft a thoughtful response.

3. Audio Communication

Sometimes a 10-minute conversation is exactly what you need to move a project along. Instant messaging isn’t ideal because you need to go deep into the details.

Email isn’t necessary because you don’t need to document the conversation. Plus, you want to quickly bounce ideas off each other in an impromptu brainstorming session.

Need more reasons to keep the phones?

Phone calls are a great way to build deeper connections with remote teammates. You can catch up on life away from the office for a few minutes before jumping into the latest quarterly numbers.

There are many different options for audio communication in the digital age. If you go the VoIP route, you don’t even need to buy phones.

You can also go the hosted PBX systems route. Check out this article to learn about its benefits.

4. Video Conferencing

Video conferencing can make everyone feel like they’re in the same room even though they’re in different countries. It provides a deeper and richer experience than instant messages, phone calls, or emails.

Video conferencing brings written, spoken, and visual communication together during a presentation. You can hear and see the presenter. You can also see the presenter’s slide deck or spreadsheet when she shares her screen.

Video conferencing is also great for staff meetings. It allows the people who aren’t in the room to see facial expressions.

They can use these cues to see if their message is connecting in the room. It provides them with the feedback they can use to determine what point to bring up next.

They can also see when the person in the room is about to stop or start talking. This helps avoid the awkward moments of people talking over each other because they can’t see each other.

5. Project Management

Office workers are always juggling multiple projects and rapidly changing priorities. And they’re working in teams that are distributed across the world.

In this environment, projects can quickly go off track. Project management software helps teams stay in sync to avoid this fate.

It helps teams monitor where they are against where they should be. It highlights the key deliverables and deadlines for the projects.

It lets everyone know the tasks they’re responsible for. It makes it easy for each team member to provide status updates to the group. And it helps teams do all of this collaboratively and seamlessly.

6. Knowledge Base

With Google, we have all of the world’s information at our fingertips. In the office, it’s a different story. We struggle to find important information.

We waste precious time digging through old emails, folders, and instant message conversations. We get frustrated because we can’t find what we’re looking for after all that digging.

Knowledge bases fix this problem. They centralize the company’s information in a platform that’s searchable.

This makes it easier to train new employees. It makes it easier to find answers to questions that many people have asked before. It ensures that knowledge doesn’t disappear into thin air when a valuable employee leaves the company.

7. Brainstorming

Innovation is necessary to thrive in a competitive landscape. In order to innovate, you need to generate a lot of ideas.

You need to be able to see those ideas visually. You need to capture and store those ideas so you can pick the best ones at the end of a brainstorming session.

Brainstorming software helps you do this in a fun and collaborative way. You can use mind mapping software to generate many ideas quickly. Digital whiteboards give you the flexibility to jot down ideas just the way you like.

8. Note Taking

You need to find that key insight you know you wrote down. But you have 10 notepads sitting on your desk. It’s going to take a while.

Before you can collaborate with others, you need to organize your own information. You need to be able to access that information quickly.

Note taking software lets you jot down notes after meetings. It makes your notes searchable so you can easily find what you’re looking for. It lets you organize your information in the system that works for you.

You don’t have to waste time finding relevant notes. You don’t have to waste your mental energy remembering the important details about a project. It’s all right there in your note-taking software.

9. Coworking Space

Many remote workers don’t have a home office. Coffee shops can be loud and distracting.

Coworking spaces fill an important need for remote workers. They provide them with a quiet and productive environment to do their best work.

They give them the office tools they need to collaborate with team members in different cities. They give them a sense of community so they don’t get lonely.

10. In-Person Meeting

Modern tools allow us to collaborate in ways we couldn’t have imagined a few decades ago. Thanks to these tools, we can get impressive things done with people that are halfway across the world.

However, we’re social creatures that need to connect. Talking face to face is the best way to do that. It’s the quickest way to form deep bonds between team members.

Collaboration software gives us the flexibility and freedom to work from anywhere and connect with each other at any time. But there’s always going to be a place for in-person communication.

Work Smarter with Collaboration Tools for Business

In the previously mentioned Workfront survey, 58% of workers say they don’t have time to think beyond their daily to-do list because they’re so busy. These workers need to free up their time so they can do their highest-value work.

Collaboration tools for business can help them communicate more efficiently with their colleagues. These tools can help them be more productive. These tools can give them their time back so they can focus on their most important tasks.